SDLC - High Level Design

High Level Design Phase

Purpose

The High Level Design phase focuses on allocating functionality, understanding the domain, managing stakeholder expectations and establishing the test strategy. During the High Level Design phase, the output of earlier phases is used to partition the system into conceptual components and specify their behavior to help produce a logical model of the system. Developers should remain framework independent; if Java classes are being mentioned, focus has likely crossed over to the Detailed Design phase. The first four steps mentioned below could occur in parallel. They should interact with each other but remain loosely coupled.

What to Do

During this phase the development team will:

Allocate Functionality - Assign responsibilities to objects and begin partitioning the system into subsystems.

Model Data - Identify legacy data sources, engage IMB to develop the logical data model and define the mapping between entities and the logical data model.

Design System Interface - Design the user-to-system and the system-to-system APIs.

Establish Test Strategy - Define the scope and general direction of the test effort, describing the important issues needing to be covered in the test plan and test scripts.

Develop Proof-of-Concept (optional) - If a prototype is necessary, it could be developed as early as the Requirements and Analysis phase, or as late as the High Level Design phase.

Begin documenting Architectural Decisions .

Database Management Office (DBMO)

Interaction with the DBMO will likely occur during every phase of the SDLC. During this phase, the development team will collaborate with the DBMO to identify which classes in the analysis object model need to be persisted and how the data is going to be accessed. Therefore, the analysis object model, the robustness diagrams , the business rules and the supplementary specification should all be made available at this time.

Certification & Accreditation (C&A)

C&A documentation to consider during this phase: Interconnection Agreements, Data Sharing Agreements, Configuration Management Plan.

Contact the Information Security Office for further details regarding specific efforts relevant to this phase of the SDLC.

Records Management

During the High Level Phase the development team should work with the records management team to draft the needed records schedules. For more information visit the FSA Records Management Web Site .

Standard Artifacts

Artifact	Template	Example
Analysis Model	NA	Analysis Model Example
Test Strategy	Test Strategy Template	Test Strategy Example
Navigation Map	Nav Map Template	NA